27
January 1922

History does not proceed with the logical march of a proposition
of Euclid. Wars and disputes never arise over clear-cut issues.
A confused situation arises, wheels revolve within wheels,
a hundred wires are pulled in a hundred different directions. Then,
as the result of conscious "philosophising" by some,
and recognition by others of some isolated outstanding feature,
there often emerges a popular slogan which, with the aid of
more or less interested propaganda, secures acceptance as epitomising
the real matter at stake.

"White South Africa," or "the maintenance of
the colour bar," has thus been accepted by the white workers
as the prime "motif in this strike, just as "making
the world free for democracy" was accepted by the masses
in the late capitalist war- only now, years after, to be found
out as a piece of humbug. Meanwhile, recognising that "white
South Africa" supplies the steam and the ginger in this
strike, even to the point of a "revolutionary situation," let
us see whether the trouble is really just ethnographical, or
whether we cannot find here too the thread that runs through
all conflicts in modern society, the thread of the inexorable
class struggle necessitated by a capitalist system of production.

As a matter of fact, "white South Africa" (or "Vote
White," as per Kentridge's recent election handbills) is
a double-edged cry. A recent leaflet issued by Mr. Hendrikz as
Secretary of the Mine Workers' Union quoted an article from "Ons
Vaderland" by one General Pienaar - whoever he may be, he
can scarcely be a member of the working class - referring to
the age-long "struggle to build up South Africa as a white
man's country and to uphold that supreme principle, THE PRESERVATION
OF LAND AND PEOPLE." The Chamber of Mines, says the General,
wants to wipe out the dividing line between black and white,
involving equal rights for kaffirs, or the black taking his place
alongside the white: first on the industrial field, to be followed
by the vote and by intermarriage, the native, in receipt of higher
pay for doing white man's work, taking such a position in society
that many a white girl, impoverished by the lifting of the colour
bar, will marry a coloured man. "Agriculture, he proceeds,
will suffer from the diminished demand for produce in proportion
to the replacement of white by coloured, and" - here comes
the rub - "KAFFIR LABOUR ON THE FARMS WILL BECOME

UNPAYABLY EXPENSIVE." Finally, he indignantly repudiates
the suggestion that the Miners' Union, 85 per cent. Afrikander,
has socialistic leanings: and Mr. Hendrikz adds a note that his
Union is "specially organised to resist native trouble." This,
then, is what "White South Africa" means in the mouth
of its farmer champion (and many of them are preaching this stuff
daily from strike platforms). It means the land for the landlords,
CHEAP AND SERVILE BLACK LABOUR to work it, and jobs on the mines
as an outlet for the disinherited bywoner. Is this "White
South Africa," or is it not much more the BLACK SOUTH AFRICA?
Is it not just the capitalist ideal, except that industrial capitalism
sees no reason why it should philanthropically provide outlets
for the bywoner? Is not the General's repudiation of "Socialism" therefore
perfectly in place?

Afrikander workers, beware of being sidetracked, as you easily
may be owing to your country upbringing, into fighting the battle
of a Junker section which shot down the workers in 1913 - 14, and
which can have no interest in the workers' cause, as workers,
to-day either.

There is not and never was a white South Africa, and when you
shout for it, you are dangerously near shouting for just the
black labour country capitalism has made of South Africa. Capitalism,
whose first principle all over the world is cheap labour capitalism,
whose profits can be made only at the workers' expense, is
responsible for the black man doing the bulk of the work in
this country.
It is no use "damning the nigger" for that. Bob Waterston,
who in 1917 fought Andrews at Benoni with appeals much a la Pienaar,
now sees this much at any rate, that "the workers have no
quarrel with the natives, their quarrel is entirely with the
men who wish to place the natives in white men's positions AT
STARVATION WAGES." Natives at starvation wages, that is
the thing to attack: that is what ruins the white standard. Well,
then, if you want "White South Africa," your campaign,
so far from being on Pienaar lines, must be rather in the direction
of encouraging native labour to become "unpayably expensive." Nor
again, even though you eschew the Pienaar philosophy, will it
avail to talk to and about "the workers" as though
they consisted solely of white men, and ignore the rest. The
C.I.D, (whose masters dread a black workers' strike above all)
will let you run on to your heart's content on those lines; but
they are ludicrously untrue, as the Witbank "supervisors" now
admit. Parson Mullineux said the other day that if the status
quo were eliminated the kaffir within five years would be fighting
for higher pay. Of course he will, and whether the status quo
is eliminated or not. He will do it because he is a worker
under capitalism, and good luck to him!

The
white workers are under a very real and proper fear of competition
from
this cheap labour:

in fact, except for the few skilled trades
and the protection of the colour bar, they cannot compete with
it under capitalism, and in fighting for the colour bar they
are at best fighting only a rearguard action. "The people
who do the work of a country eventually inherit it."

But
if so, then the enemy is the class and system that gives the palm
to labour cheapness. Modern capitalism cannot raise
wages. It is sick, and cannot pull itself together except by
yet further cheapening labour, by yet further reliance on the
cheapest labour. Then away with it! This strike, like every
other labour movement, has body or meaning or effect only to the
extent
that it helps to destroy the capitalist system. The deliberate
attempt to overthrow the whole rule and government of the capitalist
class thus becomes, not a matter for "idealists" or "extremists," but
the immediate present-day practical goal of every step taken
by organised labour. And if to that end, as a workaday case of "labour
solidarity," you decided to secure the support of the mass
of the "real workers," well, what could be more proper
in a workers' attack on capitalist exploitation?

Fellow-worker, ask yourself, am I really for the whites as whites
- landlords, magnates, profiteers, parasites, exploiters and
all - or am I not rather for the workers as workers - white brown,
yellow, black and all - and against the capitalists as capitalists
- THE ONLY REAL BLACK MEN?

It is not in "the spirit of the Voortrekkers who conquered
Dingaan," as Mr. Pohl would say, that you will achieve a
while South Africa. It is in the spirit of the humble but very
determined industrial proletariat of Russia, who overthrew the
master class and made work, for the common good, the one condition
of "status." There is no remedy for the situation,
there is no future for the white workers, under capitalism. Communism
alone can make South Africa a white man's country, in the sense
that Communism alone can secure to every workers - whatever his
colour - the full product of his labour. Only when that is secured
will a white man is safe: only then can you begin to talk of
a "white South Africa."